The Gazette 1974

should atone by suffering for their offences" to the more

enlightened view of the Gladstone Committee that:

"Prison treatment should be designed to maintain,

stimulate or awaken the higher susceptibilities of pris–

oners and turn them out of prison better men and

women than when they came in." It has also been

maintained that to the extent that prison deters poten–

tial offenders from engaging in criminal activity, it pro–

tects society. While our present prison system is largely

based on the concept of retribution-in fact Mr. Cooney

himself has admitted as much in a recent television

interview-very few people today will seriously argue

that retribution alone is a sufficient justification for

prison. The

1962

Interdepartmental Committee on

Prisons had as its recommendation that "prisons should

have as their aim the final rehabilitation of the offen–

der" .

Nigel Walker in his book

Sentencing Policy in a

Rational Society

points out that since no human being

has the attributes of the legendary recording angel,

capable of looking into men's minds, it is impossible to

decide on a form or degree of punishment appropriate

to a particular offence. I t has sometimes been suggested

by some that we can "improve" offenders by punishing

them. This, of course, has never been proved, but even

if we accept the argument for a moment, it is obvious

that before he can be improved, the offender himself

must accept the punishment as just retribution.

follow this reasoning to its logical conclusion we arrive

at the absurd position that as Walker states "a man

with a tender conscience will have to undergo a more

severe punishment than a man who does not admit that

he deserves his punishment". Finally, there is implicit

in the concept of retribution a view of the criminal as

'being somehow different than other people. On the

contrary, crime is an integral part of our society and

indeed of any society.

The protection of society

The other main justification for imprisonment is that

it serves to protect society by somehow reducing the

incidence of crime. Crime is

thus seen as

something

eradicated-something which

threatens the bulwark of society and is likely,

if not stamped out, to tear our society asunder. This

view constitutes the greatest single obstacle to penal

reform. Crime, like any other form of deviance, has a

positive as well as a negative role to play in society.

Emile Durkheim, the famous criminologist, was the first

to make this point. He claimed that crime is not an

abnormal but a normal part of our society "bound up:'

as he said "with the fundamental conditions of all

social life and by that very fact it is useful". Another

criminologist, Cohen, has given examples of some of the

useful functions that crime can play in society-for

instance, it helps to clarify the rules on which society

is built, it serves the useful purpose, from society's

point of view, of uniting the group against the deviant

(this is the scapegoating process familiar to us all), it

can act as a safety valve for frustrations, etc., or it

can act as a warning signal to society that something

is radically wrong. The scapegoating process can be seen

in the remark of Lord Denning that "punish–

ment inflicted for grave crimes should reflect the revul–

sion felt by the great majority of citizens for them".

When deviance acts as a warning signal Leslie Wilkins

has pointed out, that by isolating criminals in jails, and

therefore ensuring that information regarding them can

be rejected and distorted, society's defects and shO

TI '

comings can be hidden. Instead of trying to eradicate

crime we should be satisfied to

diminish

the frequenC)

of behaviour which is acknowledged as being

partic"~

larly damaging

to society. The irratIonal fear that

rna~~

people have of crime and crimmals is not justified.

seems that many have a stereotyped picture of

criminal as being a maraudmg VIOlent person, lurk1l1g

in the shadows, waiting to pounce on completely inn o'

cent and unsuspecting bystanders. This is just not the

case with the majority of criminals. Only about

per

cent of the prisoners in

1971

were convicted of

offen~s

against the person. The offences which result in e

greatest number of convictions are the property

offe~c~

of simple larceny and housebreaking and shopbreak1ng·

Only eight people were convicted of murder and

~aJl'

slaughter in

1971.

Furthermore, in many of these

cnIJIe~

of violence the offender and the victims were previouS))

known to each other. Marvin Wolfgang in his

PatterTl)

of Criminal Homicide

has pointed out that only

p~r

cent of the homicides in his study of homicides

Philadelphia were committed by strangers-and in

over two-thirds of them there was a pre-existing

victl~:

offender relationship. Rather similar findings were

closed in England by Gibson and Klein.

President's Commission on Crime in the

V.S.·

points out that the risks of serious attack

fro~

strangers in the street is only half as great a:

the risk of such attacks from spouses, family rnefll

bers and friends and that the closer the relationshIp

th~

greater the hazard. Thirdly, as Nigel Walker poiOts

out, "the anti-social use of vehicles in Norther!

Ireland is a much more important source

death, bereavement, physical suffering and

dl~:

ablement than any intentional form of violen,c e

-yet people are far more paranoic about cn

J11

than about car accidents. Also, it could be argue

that the community is economically injured far rn o;

by, for instance, the speculator and the tax dodger

exploit the community for their own ends, than by a l ;

offender who steals something from a shop--yet the

fir~1

is held out to us by society as a model of what we a

could become and the second is thrown in jail to atOOe

for his sin.

128

No deterrent effect in prison

However, even if we accept that the aim of the pe na ,

system should be to control and reduce criminal

beh~

viour prison is certainly the most expensive, waste,ft!·

cruel and probably least effectIve method of so

dOI~g·

is impossible to prove that pnson is a more effectiVe

deterrent

than any other sanction, either on the

offen~e;

who has been processed through it, or on poten

UlI

offenders. In a survey carried out by Willcock in

the majority of the

808

youths he questioned put f ea :

of imprisonment as only fourth in the list of

co~see

quences which would deter them from comml

ttlJl ·

crime. The effect on his family's opinion, the possible

loss of a job, the shame of appearing in Court

were

considered greater deterrents. Secondly, before

aO~

I ,

·e

sanction can become a deterrent the person must be Ie".

that if he commits the crime there is a reasonable

pOSSI;

bility that firstly, he will be caught, and secondly

th~.

the particular sanction will be applied to him. It

I·

. e'

generally accepted that approximately half the cnIJl

committed are not even reported to the police, and

°e

those that are less than one-half are traced to th.

offender. Finally, of course, not all convicted offender